Bardney Abbey 1

22 OCTOBER 2014 BARDNEY ABBEY 1 Release date Version notes Who Current version: H1-Bardney-2014-1 22/10/2014 Original version RS/NK Previous versions: ———— This text is made available through the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs License; additional terms may apply Authors for attribution statement: Charters of William II and Henry I Project Richard Sharpe, Faculty of History, University of Oxford Nicholas Karn, University of Southampton BARDNEY ABBEY Benedictine abbey of St Peter, St Paul, and St Oswald County of Lincolnshire : Diocese of Lincoln Founded in the seventh century; refounded as a Benedictine priory dependent on Charroux ?1087; raised to the status of abbey ?1115 × 1116 The story of the priory at Bardney, raised in Henry I’s time to an abbey, relies on a good deal of conjectural reconstruction. Writing in 1124, William of Malmesbury tells us that Bishop Remigius of Lincoln (d. 1092) ‘built from scratch the monastery at Stow St Mary and restored a second at Bardney, to which he had long shown favour (ex ueteri fauore suo innouauit)’ (Gesta pontificum, IV § 177). William’s source may have been no more than contemporary memory that Remigius had dedicated the church. He says nothing of its founder. Three deeds have been treated as contemporary witnesses from 1087, 1115, and 1125, but they are far from authentic. The first is a deed in the name of the founder Gilbert de Gant, recording his own gift, with the consent of King William, of lands and churches to re-establish the minster of St Peter and St Oswald which had flourished of old, ‘ut uenerabilis Beda in narratione historie ecclesiastice testatur’. The first witnesses are Archbishop Lanfranc and Bishop Remigius, followed by Robert, William, and Henry, sons of King William I, and William earl of 22 OCTOBER 2014 BARDNEY ABBEY 2 Chester (an error for William the constable of the earl of Chester). Everything about the deed except the spelling of Gilbert, ‘Giselbrictus’, is anachronistic. It was inspected in 1331 (C53/118 no. 10 (3); CalCh, iv. 235), and it was also recited in a deed in the name of Walter de Gant, Gilbert’s son, dated ‘1115’, whose formulation smacks more of the thirteenth century that the early twelfth.1 A simpler deed in Walter’s name is dated, impossibly, ‘1125’, at Bardney, in the ‘twentieth’ year of King Henry’s reign (1119–20), when the king was in Normandy, and addressed to Archbishop Ralph (d. 1122) and Bishop Robert Bloet (d. 1123).2 These tell how Gilbert first endowed a monasterium. In ‘1115’ Walter made his gifts to the abbot and convent of Bardney, while in ‘1125’ he said that he had raised his father’s monastery into a free abbey (‘in abbatiam liberam promoui’). These forgeries present a false picture of an independent church under the patronage of the Gant family. They cannot be used even to date the several gifts by the Gant family to the abbey, though they may provide a guide to the possessions held by the abbey in the early thirteenth century. The topographical information is discussed by A. H. Thompson, ‘Notes on the history of the abbey of St Peter, St Paul, and St Oswald, Bardney’, Associated Architectural Societies’ Reports and Papers 32 (1913–14), 35–96, 351–402, at pp. 38– 44. A writ-charter of King Henry grants to Ralph, ‘qui fuit prior de Bard(eney), locum et ecclesiam ipsam in abbatiam, precatione Walteri de Gant et concessione abbatis Fulcaldi Carrofensis cuius fuit monachus’ ({2} below). This is the only example of a charter that licences the change in status from priory to abbey at the request of the lay founder and with the consent of the mother-house. Dugdale had printed Carnotensis, referring to Chartres, which made no sense, and the reading Carrofensis, Charroux, was restored from the cartulary by Thompson (‘Notes on Bardney’, 40). Modern research has shown that the Poitevin abbey of Charroux had a policy of starting new priories which, on maturity, became independent abbeys. Among the sources from Bardney King Henry’s act alone refers to a dependent priory, and it is the most credible witness. It is backed up by the testimony of a privilege for Charroux from Pope Urban II (JL 5627), datable from its place-date to 1 Dugdale, i. 142a–143b [from a transcript of the Bardney cartulary], repr. Monasticon, i. 628a–629b (no. ii), Walter de Gant’s deed dated ‘1115’, reciting the deed of Gilbert de Gant. 2 Monasticon, i. 630a–b (no. iv), prints the deed of Walter de Gant ‘1125’ from the Bardney cartulary. 22 OCTOBER 2014 BARDNEY ABBEY 3 within a day or two of 21 March 1096, which includes Bardney and other Lincolnshire churches given by Gilbert de Gant (P. de Monsabert, Chartes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’abbaye de Charroux, Archives historiques du Poitou 39 (1910), 78–82, at p. 81; see also Charroux headnote). The most detailed reconstruction and explanation of events is the work of G. T. Beech, ‘Aquitanians and Flemings in the refoundation of Bardney abbey (Lincolnshire) in the later eleventh century’, Haskins Society Journal 1 (1989), 73–90), who, however, did not question the authenticity of the deeds of Gilbert and Walter. The explanation runs that Gilbert de Gant, son of Ralph de Gant, who held the castle of Alost (in Dutch Aalst), near Gent in Flanders, was enfeoffed in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire by King William I. Like so many in such circumstances he chose to found a priory, and the site he picked was Bardney, one of many manors in which his predecessor was Ulf Fenisc (DB, i. 354d; Lincs § 24. 17). Bardney was assessed at only two carucates, but it had sokes and its income was £20 together with £30 in tailla (‘exactions’), a possible reflection of its former status. The old church, mentioned by Bede, who described the coming of St Oswald’s relics to the royal minster of Bardney (HE, III 11), is presumed to have long since decayed.3 The relics had been removed in the early tenth century to a new minster at Gloucester by Æthelflæd, lady of the Mercians, and in Domesday Book, though twenty-five churches are mentioned in Gilbert’s fee in Lincolnshire, no church is mentioned at Bardney. Gilbert obtained the support of the abbey of Charroux, at this date famous for its relics, which between 1079 and 1084 had provided monks for three new priories in Flanders. One of these was at La Beuvrière, from which place Drogo de Bevrere took his name, who was, like Gilbert, a Fleming who was a substantial tenant-in-chief in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It is possible that Drogo influenced Gilbert to look south to Charroux. These priories in Flanders were expected to mature into independent abbeys, and so it is no surprise that Abbot Fulcaldus should consent to Walter de Gant’s request that Bardney too should become an abbey. The prior, Ralph, a monk of Charroux, became abbot, and there was nothing disruptive about the change in the status of the house. 3 Henry of Huntingdon includes St Oswald and Bardney (Historia Anglorum, IX 12– 15, Greenway, 632–7) in a long account of English saints compiled from Bede (ib. IX 8–50); he adds nothing about Bardney in his own time, despite its location within his diocese of Lincoln to which he was deeply devoted. 22 OCTOBER 2014 BARDNEY ABBEY 4 The foundation of the priory cannot have happened before the Domesday survey, but, on the testimony of William of Malmesbury, the dedication was carried out before the death of Bishop Remigius, so the date-range is 1086 × 1092. The conventional dating to 1087 depends on Gilbert’s purported deed, witnessed by the three sons of King William I, who was by implication king at the time. In 1096 Pope Urban dedicated the new abbey church at Charroux and a few weeks later granted a papal privilege to the abbey, in which are mentioned, ‘in Nicholensi episcopatu [Lincoln diocese] in Anglia monasterium de Bardonaco, ecclesiam de Scantunaco [Scampton], de Stadsumaco [?Stainton], de Curfo [Culpho], de Scatusbeio’ [Skendleby]: Scampton and Skendleby were manors in Gilbert’s fee, both of them with churches in 1086 (DB, i. 354c, 355b; Lincs §§ 24. 1, 46). Culpho was a manor in Suffolk given to Charroux by someone else in different circumstances.4 Whether Gilbert was still alive in 1096 is uncertain.5 It was some twenty years later that King Henry confirmed the change in status of the house, for his act is datable with some probability to 1115–16 ({2} below), a date which may have contributed to the date included in the deed forged in the name of Walter de Gant. King Henry’s role in relation to Bardney and its patron is less clear. It appears that he had already confirmed the gift by Walter and his father Gilbert to the church of Bardney of two minster churches, Barton- on-Humber and Hunmanby ({1}), churches whose property is described in some detail in the forged deed dated ‘1115’ (though Hunmanby is omitted from ‘1125’). If Bardney was a priory still dependent on its lay patrons, then it is surprising that the king should confirm their gifts. Yet at a much later date he confirmed the nomination as abbot of a monk Ivo by Walter de Gant ‘de cuius feodo abbacia est’ ({3}). Where a Benedictine house remained in the fee of its lay patron, it had the status 4 The donors in this case were Roger the Poitevin and his wife Countess Almodis of La Marche, for whom Charroux was her local abbey in Poitou (discussed in the headnote to Henry I’s charter for Charroux, 000, not in Regesta).

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